Green Prepares to Call a Foul on De Blasio?

There’s been a fair amount of unionactivity today, so in light of that, here’s a little-noticed letter from Mark Green’s campaign to the city’s Campaign Finance Board, asking them to clarify some “ambiguity” about what counts as proof of illegal coordination between a campaign and a third party.

“The issue as to what constitutes improper coordination, and thus, whether expenditures by third parties are deemed contributions to and expenditures by a campaign, has been raised and litigated in prior election cycles” but “there nevertheless remains ambiguity as to how the Board analyzes this issue,” says attorney Jerry Goldfeder in the July 7 letter to the board.

The current law “relies upon vague terms such as ‘connected to the candidate’ and ‘relationship … with the candidate,’” Goldfeder writes.

Examples that the C.F.B. cites to define these terms “are relevant for only the most egregiously improper conduct. We are, therefore, still left with an unclear presentation of what the law is and how it will be applied.”

Goldfeder says in the letter that clarification will be “useful for my client’s campaign” and for others running this year.

It’s looks like (indirect) acknowledgment that the Green campaign expects one of its rivals, Bill de Blasio, to benefit disproportionately from his supporters in the labor community, of which he has many.